News from Rope Of Silicon

Hollywood is such a weird place, Captain America: The Winter Soldier writer/director, sibling duo Joe and Anthony Russo had previously made the much-loathed You, Me and Dupree before finding sitcom success with "Community". Now, well, now they are directing Captain America: Civil War, being considered for The Avengers: Infinity War - Part 1 and 2 and have just locked up a three-year first-look deal with Sony.
Obviously the immediate speculation is this has something to do with Sony's new pact with Marvel and Disney, particularly with the expectation Spider-Man will show up in Captain America 3 before the new Spider-Man arrives in 2017, reportedly under the direction of Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods), but what have the Russo brothers really shown us that gives them such immediate cred in the industryc
I know people liked Winter Soldier more than I did, but was it so good that we're ready to
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How many projects does Steven Spielberg have going onc He has St. James Place coming out later this year, The Bfg coming out in 2016, a probable new Indiana Jones film, a possible West Side Story remake, and many more. Well, he has another project to put up on his bulletin board of movies: an adaptation of war photographer Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do.
Many different parties wanted this book, including Reese Witherspoon, Darren Aronofsky (for Natalie Portman), Margot Robbie, and the Weinsteins. Spielberg ultimately came out victorious with Warner Bros., and the person he has attached for his lead is Jennifer Lawrence. You may have heard of her.
amz asin="B00L9B7CSM" size="small"Lynsey Addario traveled to Afghanistan post-9/11 and specialized in victims of conflict. Her photographs also include victims of the Iraqi War, the genocide in Darfur, and of rape in the Congo.
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Get ready for "lots and lots of nothing" as the Screen Junkies crew gets back into form with a new honest trailer, this time for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, which hits DVD and Blu-ray this Friday, though as I said this morning, I'd recommend skipping it and it sounds like the Screen Junkies would agree.
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I absolutely hate the fact Focus is using the backslash in the title for Tarsem Singh's new movie Self/less. It's about as clever as the vanity plate I saw a week ago on a Toyota Prius that read Imirnmn. Yeah, don't think so. Nevertheless, I really like Singh's work, yes, primarily for his visuals, but when he matches the narrative up to those visuals, as he did with The Fall, it really works.
As for Self/less, it's described as a psychological science fiction thriller, in which an extremely wealthy man (Ben Kingsley) is dying from cancer and undergoes a radical medical procedure that transfers his consciousness into the body of a healthy young man (Ryan Reynolds). But all is not as it seems when he starts to uncover the mystery of the body's origin and the organization that will kill to protect its cause. Matthew Goode, Michelle Dockery,
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A24 has released a new trailer for Ex Machina, the upcoming directorial debut from Alex Garland, screenwriter of 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go. The A.I. thriller stars Domhnall Gleeson as programmer at an internet-search giant, who wins a competition to spend a week at the private mountain estate of the company's brilliant and reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac).
Upon his arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan has chosen him to be the human component in a Turing Test--charging him with evaluating the capabilities, and ultimately the consciousness, of Nathan's latest experiment in artificial intelligence. That experiment is Ava (Alicia Vikander), a breathtaking A.I. whose emotional intelligence proves more sophisticated, seductive--and more deceptive--than the two men could have imagined.
The pic will have its North American premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in March before its April 10 theatrical release and we'll have a review for you from the fest,
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As if I needed to tell you, the rash of character posters for Avengers: Age of Ultron are all leading to a new trailer for the movie, which will premiere during ABC's new drama "American Crime" on Thursday, March 5 at 10 Pm Est and will most likely be online immediately after, which is to say probably around 7 Pm my time. Today's new poster features Chris Evans as Captain America, but wait, there's more!
Robert Downey Jr. gets smug in a new video letting us know of a new contest in which you donate just $10 to benefit Julia's House, a children's hospice center dedicated to helping improve the lives of children diagnosed with terminal illness, you could win a chance to live out your superhero dreams with Rdj in La. What does that meanc Well...
You and a friend will be joining Robert Downey Jr. for the best day of your lives
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A bit of an interesting development has just been reported as Netflix has landed theatrical and streaming rights to Cary Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation, the filmmaker's most recent film following his work on HBO's "True Detective". Netflix reportedly paid $12 million for the film with plans for both a theatrical and streaming release, though no specific plans were reported. However, the studio does intend to make an awards season push with the feature, which may prove interesting as such releases have seen some pushback from theater owners, wary of day-and-date releases, so I wouldn't expect that to be the case here.
The film stars Idris Elba in a drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country. Elba plays the commander of a guerilla force and begins a process of dehumanizing the boy as he becomes a soldier.
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Pretty much your standard Tuesday podcast, except it's Not! Instead of new DVD and Blu-rays, we review Focus since we didn't have an episode last Friday and along with that we get to your questions, Leonard Nimoy's passing, "SNL's" so-called offensive Isis sketch, a list of some of the better movies of 2015 so far, books, games and, yes, a little sports talk... don't get mad. Hope you enjoy!
If you are on Twitter, we have a Twitter account dedicated to the podcast at @bnlpod. Give us a follow won'tchac
I want to remind you that you can call in and leave us your comments, thoughts, questions, etc. directly on our Google Voice account, which you can call and leave a message for us at (925) 526-5763, which may be even easier to remember at (925) 5-bnl-pod. Just call, leave us a voice mail and we'll add those to the show and respond directly.
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Foxcatcher
I thought Foxcatcher was a great film, but one I have no real desire to revisit. The Blu-ray comes with some deleted scenes as well as a new "The Story of Foxcatcher" featurette. Not exactly enough to get me to want to spring for a copy.

The Humbling
Mike didn't really like this one and I can't say I have too much interest in it. Director Barry Levinson just isn't really hitting it out of the park any longer, or even really hitting singles at the moment, though Rock the Kasbah looks like it could be good.

With filming underway on what is surely expected by many to be an Oscar contender over the coming months the first pictures of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Oliver Stone's Snowden have been released.
Written and directed by Stone, Snowden is based on the books "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man" by Luke Harding and "Time of the Octopus" by Anatoly Kucherena.
Gordon-Levitt stars as Edward Snowden and on his Facebook page he released the following note, which explains the pictures you're seeing here:
I was surprised when I first learned this about Snowden--that he enlisted in the Us Army in 2004. He wanted to go fight in Iraq, but during basic training at Fort Benning, he broke both of his legs and received an administrative discharge. After that, he was still determined to serve his country (love him or hate him, you gotta admit
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My wife likes the group Haim, particularly that song "The Wire" and I like what M83 did with the score for Oblivion, so just maybe the collaboration of the two on the song "Holes in the Sky" for the The Divergent Series: Insurgent soundtrack will bring us together in some unexpected way. I don't know.
The studio today released the full tracklisting for the upcoming release, which will be available digitally on March 17 with the film hitting theaters three days later on March 20. I'm actually seeing it the Monday of that week (the 16th) so we'll see if this one can improve on the absolutely awful first film.
Check out the tracklisting below and listen to "Holes in the Sky".
"Holes in the Sky" - M83 with Haim
"Blood Hands"- Royal Blood
"Never Let You Down" - Woodkid featuring Lykke Li
"The Heart of You" - Anna Calvi
"Sacrifice
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Netflix has announced Andy and Lana Wachowski's new television series "Sense8" will premiere on June 5 and judging by what the siblings have been saying and the plot synopsis it is going to be some weird and wild stuff:
One gunshot, one death, one moment out of time that irrevocably links eight minds in disparate parts of the world, putting them in each other's lives, each other's secrets, and in terrible danger. Ordinary people suddenly reborn as "Sensates."
Now, I am not a huge fan of the title, but then again, perhaps it has greater meaning than just some silly reason to turn it into a glorified vanity plate, but things get a little more interesting when you consider how Lana described their pitch to Netflix.
"We wanted to make a thing that's about everything," Lana told io9. "We told Netflix we were like, 'We're only interested in doing this.
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Not a lot of information on this right now, but Latino Review is reporting Drew Goddard, who was at one point writing and directing the Spider-Man spin-off Sinister Six is now turning his attention to rebooting Spider-Man at Sony, following the studio's deal with Marvel to have Spider-Man play a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There was recent word Sony was still going to move forward with The Sinister Six as well as a Venom feature, but with this news it would seem both are most likely dead... for now.
The as of yet Untitled Spider-Man Project is set for a July 18, 2017 release with no one yet set to star as the newest incarnation of the webslinger.
As for the plot of this new feature, word is there won't be a new origin story, but instead it will feature Spidey "auditioning" to be part of The Avengers. Considering rumors
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Gillian Flynn's name is no longer just a name on the list of New York Times best selling authors, she is now a name that generates feature film interest thanks to her work with David Fincher, adapting her very own Gone Girl for the screen and next up is Dark Places, an adaptation of her 2009 novel with Charlize Theron starring.
The film was directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah's Key) who also adapted the novel for the screen, centering on a woman (Theron) who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day by a secret society obsessed with solving notorious crimes. Christina Hendricks, Chloe Moretz, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Drea de Matteo and Corey Stoll co-star.
No word on a domestic release date, though it has had an MPAA rating since last May. That really doesn't bode too well for the film's quality,
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One of the films I am most looking forward to at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival is Ex Machina, the directorial debut of writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go). I know it's not a world premiere, and it has already opened in plenty of territories, but the word coming out of the places it has already played has me quite excited.
The film features a trio of actors I think are terrific: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, and Oscar Isaac. Seeing these three tackle a science-fiction drama written by a guy who has previously given us very thoughtful genre films is very interesting to me. So, it will be one I will make sure I do not miss during my jam-packed festival.
Ex Machina has a new poster for you all to admire below. It's a fairly simple one, featuring Alicia Vikander front and center. It's
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While there are people out there that don't really find Kevin Hart all that funny, I am not one of those people. I find Hart to be quite funny and typically enjoy his movies, but even I can't get behind Get Hard. This looks 100% awful and a new red band trailer sets out to provide further proof. Maybe there's a humorous pay-off and the marketing team is getting all the bad bits out of the way to start, but I'm just not feeling it.
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When millionaire hedge fund manager James (Will Ferrell) is nailed for fraud and bound for a stretch in San Quentin, the judge gives him 30 days to get his affairs in order. Desperate, he turns to Darnell (Kevin Hart) to prep him for a life behind bars. But despite James' one-percenter assumptions, Darnell is a hard-working small business owner who has never received a parking ticket,
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I am in the midst of wrapping up film school at The University of Texas. All in all, it's been a pretty decent experience. If anything, it has given me the ability to be surrounded by movie people for four years, which heavily colors how I perceive the rest of the world. I need to remember most people haven't watched 1950s Swedish films.
I have split my time fairly evenly between production classes and film studies classes, whereas most have their feet firmly planted in one or the other. One problem I have with production classes is they rarely ever get into the business side of things. On the one hand, I understand they want to encourage artistry, but on the other hand, movies cost money and you need investors to pay for your film.
One such person who gets this is the great David Fincher. In typical Fincher fashion,
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Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival and will finally be hitting theaters and On Demand on March 27, though not without its share of controversy.
IFC picked the film up for domestic distribution, reportedly with a contract from Wild Bunch that ensured it would be rated R upon release. Well, Ferrara wasn't too happy with that, quoted by The Hollywood Reporter saying, "Welcome to New York is not being distributed in the U.S. because of this company, IFC, which I'm totally disgusted wit... They knew from day one when they bought this film that they had the final version and that it wasn't going to becchanged."
Well, I can tell you now the film is rated R "for strong sexuality, graphic nudity, a rape and language" and runs 108 minutes, 17 minutes fewer than listed at IMDb and with phrases such as "soft-core porn" being included in some reviews,
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It's no secret Damien Chazelle's Whiplash was first a short film as that actually became part of the awards season conversation when the Academy decided Chazelle's Whiplash screenplay would be considered an adapted screenplay rather than original. Thing is, Chazelle actually wrote the screenplay for the feature film first and only made the short as a means of getting the entire feature film funded. But no matter, awards controversies such as those don't matter any longer. Whiplash has now won three Oscars and the film is already on DVD and Blu-ray, but Amazon is out of stock and won't have new Blu-ray copies in until March 8. Yeesh! People are loving it!
amz asin="B00PT3AUYO" size="small"Speaking of which, included on the Blu-ray is that original short film that eventually became the movie and you can get a look at it directly below as it has now found its way online.
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